Film festival

A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon the festival's focus, can include international and domestic releases. Some festivals focus on a specific film-maker or genre (e.g., film noir) or subject matter (e.g., horror film festivals). A number of film festivals specialise in short films of a defined maximum length. Film festivals are typically annual events. Some film historians do not consider Film Festivals as official releases of film, like Jerry Beck. The best known film festivals are the Venice Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and the Berlin International Film Festival, the latter being the largest film festival worldwide, based on attendance. The Venice Film Festival is the oldest major festival. The Melbourne International Film Festival is the largest film festival in the Southern Hemisphere and one of the oldest in the world. A 2013 study found 3,000 active films festivals worldwide—active defined as having held an event in the previous 24 months.

List of film festivals

This is a list of existing major film festivals, sorted by continent.

Africa

Asia

Europe

North America

Oceania

South America and the Caribbean

Traveling, online festivals

See also

References

External links

Documentary film

A documentary film is a nonfictional motion picture intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record. Such films were originally shot on film stock—the only medium available—but now include video and digital productions that can be either direct-to-video, made into a TV show or released for screening in cinemas. "Documentary" has been described as a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" that is continually evolving and is without clear boundaries.

Defining documentary

In popular myth, the word documentary was coined by Scottish documentarian John Grierson in his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926), published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926, written by "The Moviegoer" (a pen name for Grierson).

Grierson's principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the "original" actor and "original" scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials "thus taken from the raw" can be more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's definition of documentary as "creative treatment of actuality" has gained some acceptance, with this position at variance with Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov's provocation to present "life as it is" (that is, life filmed surreptitiously) and "life caught unawares" (life provoked or surprised by the camera).

Tundra Books

Tundra Books is the oldest children's book publisher in Canada.

Tundra Books was founded in 1967 by May Cutler, a Montreal-based writer and editor. Cutler established the publishing company in the basement of her home, becoming the first woman to publish children's books in Canada. The U.S. division of the company, Tundra Books of Northern New York, was founded in 1971.

One of Tundra Books' best selling titles has been the 1980 short story, The Hockey Sweater, which was written by Roch Carrier, published by May Cutler and illustrated by filmmaker Sheldon Cohen. After 28 years, Tundra Books was sold to McClelland & Stewart. In 1996, Tundra Books' headquarters moved to Toronto from its former home in Westmount, Quebec, a suburb of Montreal, and a new publisher, Kathy Lowinger, took over.

In the late 2000s, Tundra reissued many children's titles, including Mordecai Richler's Jacob Two-Two books, The Olden Days Coat by Margaret Laurence, Monica Hughes' Isis trilogy, and Veronica Tennant's On Stage, Please. On May 15, 2007, Tundra Books celebrated its 40th anniversary.

Festival

A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect of that community and its religion or traditions, often marked as a local or national holiday, mela or eid. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern.

Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanksgiving. The celebrations offer a sense of belonging for religious, social, or geographical groups, contributing to group cohesiveness. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the advent of mass-produced entertainment. Festivals that focus on cultural or ethnic topics also seek to inform community members of their traditions; the involvement of elders sharing stories and experience provides a means for unity among families.